ABOUT GOKARNA

GOKARNA!!!

Why people visit Gokarna?

One of the best pilgrimage, Holy and Tourist places among all in India is Gokarna. Why? Because of pilgrimage and religious town, its natural beauty, beautiful sea shores and attractive clean beaches, mountains and waterfalls, covered by thick forest, holy rivers, world famous temples like lord Mahabaleshwara Temple, the Bhoo Kailas temples and much more. Yes, all the above specialties are attracting people from different parts of the country and world towards this holy place.

Gokarna is located at coastal belt in Karnataka. District Head Quarter is Karwar and Taluk is Kumta.

Millions of people are visiting this place every year from different parts of India and different parts of the world. People arrive here for sightseeing, performing special pooja (religious activities), to worship lord Ganesha and Mahabaleshwara. People also visit this place with an intention to have enjoyments, fun, and to get relaxed, meditation and trekking during week end. The specialty of trekking here is, few mountains are plain whereas some consist of big rocks where the person can make trips without much stress or strain or much trekking tools. That is why Gokarna is attracting many adventurists from all over the country.
Sri Sankaracharya had visited Gokarna on his way to Himalaya. Sri Sankaracharya had stayed at Gokarna for spiritual and vedic cultural discussions. Today we can see a beautiful sri Sharadamba Temple in Gokarna built by devotees of Sri Sankaracharya. Thousands of pilgrims visiting this temple every year and performing religious activities specially during NAVARATRI festival.

LET US GET TO KNOW A BRIEF LIFE SKETCH OF SRI SANKARA

‘He who declared, “ I will come whenever virtue subsides”, came again and this time manifestation was in south, and up rose that young Brahman of whom it has been declared that at the age of sixteen  he had completed all his writings, the marvelous boy Sankaracharya arose.’

(Swami Vivekananda)

The greatest philosopher of all times and the greatest Hindu of his time, he is generally supposed to have been born at Kaladi at Kerala on the west coast of the Peninsula in A.D. 788. While one tradition has it that Siva was the family deity of Sri Sankara, another affirms that he was by birth a Sakta. Every page of Sankara’s life scintillates with so much of spiritual wisdom, so much of logical subtlety and so much of philosophical profundity that for centuries, this boy, from his granite pedestal, will point out to all men the way to blessedness and peace, and ages hence, every traveler on the rugged path to the Highest Heaven will say in his heart, “the truest vision of the Supreme came, perhaps, here”.

Even as a boy he attended the Vedic school. His sharp brain went praying in to the soul of the sacred Vedic Lore and formulated, with astute genius, accurate definitions and exact analysis, a synthetic philosophy. He renounced the world before his mind could be contaminated by its vilest and embraced monasticism, dedicating his life to God- realization and, also, to bringing backs the Indian world to his pristine purity.

Assuring his mother that he would be at her bedside at her last moment, this passionless recluse went in search of a teacher, who could formally initiate him in to the mysteries of sannyasa and show the way to the supreme. At Omkarnath, on the river Narmada, Sankara found his Guru (mentor) in Govinda Bhagavatpada. He stayed with him exploring every feet of the supreme truth, and humbling himself in the modesty of wisdom.

In fulfillment of the mandate from his Guru to establish Advaita Vedanta as the meeting ground of all monist and dualistic views, contradictory though they might appear to be, the young genius went to Varanasi, the ancient seat of Vedic religion and culture, and started spreading the gospel of unity and diversity. He held disputations with the learned leaders of various schools of thought, and by uncovering false assumptions and questioning assumed certainties, he established the supremacy of his system of thought. Here the first of his four disciples, Sanandana, later known as Padmapada joined him.

From Varanasi, the spiritual colossus journeyed on to Badrinath with his disciples, spreading the message of his synthetic philosophy. He visited many holy places such as Prayag, Hardwar, Hrishikesh, Srinagar, Rudraprayag, Nandprayag, Kamarupa and Gomukhi, worshiped the Deities on the way, and thus demonstrated that a knower of Nirguna Brahmana is not devoid of devotion to Saguna Brahmana. Here in the calm of the Himalayan heights, Sankara wrote commentaries on the ten Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahmana sutra, the triple canons (prasthana traya) of the Hindus, and established his doctrine on a firm foundation. In the words of Thibaut, “the doctrine advocated by Sankara is, from a purely philosophical point of view, and apart from all theological considerations, the most important and interesting one which has arisen on Indian soil; neither those forms of the Vedanta which diverge from the view represented by Sankara , or any of the non-Vedantic systems can be compared with the so called orthodox Vedanta in boldness, depth and subtlety of speculation”.

Then he wandered about from place to place engaging himself in discussions with leaders of diverse creeds and sects, and, by his superb dialectic skill, he went on deflating false dogmas and puncturing erroneous presumptions. Tradition has it that it was during these peregrinations that Sankara met Mandana Mishra, the greatest champion of the Mimamsa system which upholds Vedic ritualism as against the way of Self-knowledge and the monastic ideal. Sankara engaged Mandana in disputation and, on defeat; Mandana became a disciple of Sankara with the name Suresavracharya.

Sankara travelled all over the length and breadth of the vast sub-continent four times, established four principal monasteries at the four cardinal points of India, the Sringeri Math on the Sringeri hills in the south, the Sharada Math at Dwaraka in the West, the Jyotirmath at Badarikashrama in the North, and Govardhana Math at Puri in the East, and appointed his four chief disciples as pontiffs of these Maths to promote the spiritual well-being of the monks and the laity within their respective jurisdictions. He also assigned to each Math one Veda. Thus Rig-Veda went to Govardhana Math, Yaajur-Veda to Sringeri Math, Sama-Veda to Sharada Math and Atharva-Veda to Jyotir Math.

Many obnoxious cults had vitiated the Indian society then, and temples were in the hands of a coterie of corrupted priests dabbling in hideous forms of worship and animal sacrifice. Sankara, with the help of spiritual evidence and his dialectic skill, proved that these militated against the very spirit of the Vedas. He reformed these corrupt practices by infusing into them the noble principles of Vedic worship and transformed them into means to self realization. He reformed and re instituted the worship of the five Deities, Ganapati, Shiva, Narayana, Sun and Sakti, and demonstrated that ideas of image worship too had a place in the Vedanta philosophy. The whole object of worship is by constant struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach God and be God.

His deep affection for his mother triumphed over the rules governing the order of sannyasins, and, on her passing away; he performed the funeral rites of his mother in the face of stiff opposition from his relatives. He passed away in Kedarnath on the Himalayas, at the age of 32, according to tradition.

It was Sankara’s genius that organized the great body of wandering monks in India into ten well-knit orders (the dashanami sampradaya). It is not without significance that Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the prophet of modern India was a disciple of Swami Totapuri Maharaja, who belongs to the line of Puris among  the Dasnamis and that the monks of the Ramakrishna. Order is, therefore vitally linked with Sri Sankara.

Thus Spake Sri Sankara

Here are few meaningful quotes by Sri Sankara which describes about life and death, and soul and body of a human being

IGNORANCE (Avidya)

IDENTIFICATION of the Self with the aggregate of the body etc. is Avdiya or ignorance.

‘Just as a piece of rope is imagined to be a snake (in the darkness) and an oyster to be a piece of silver, so is the Atman determined to be the body by an ignorant person.’

‘Just as the stump of a tree is mistaken for a human figure and a mirage for water, so is the Atman determined to be the body by an ignorant person.’

‘The illusion of samsara is duly solely to an illusory notion and is not an absolute reality’.

‘Atman is verily one and without parts, where as the body consists of many parts; and yet the people see these two as one! What else can be called ignorance but this?’

‘Action cannot destroy ignorance, for it is not in conflict with ignorance. Knowledge alone destroys ignorance, as light destroys darkness’.

‘It is only because of ignorance that the self appears to be finite. When ignorance is destroyed, the self, who does not admit of any multiplicity whatsoever, truly reveals itself by itself, like the sun when the cloud is removed’.

‘The world is filled with attachments and an aversion etc. and is like a dream; it appears to be real as long as one is ignorant, but becomes unreal when one is awake’.

‘Avidya or nescience, inscribable and beginning less, is called the cause, which is an upadhi superimposed on Atman (Soul)’.

‘As the movement that belongs to water is attributed, through ignorance, to the moon reflected in it, so also agency, enjoyment, and other limitations, which belong to the mind are falsely attributed to Atman.

The ignorant man longing for results engages in action’.

‘The impression of ‘I am Brahman’ created by uninterrupted reflection, destroys ignorance and its distractions, as Rasayana (medicine) destroys disease’.

‘Just as the trees are thought to be moving in a direction opposite to that of a moving boat by a man in it, so transmigratory existence is considered to belong to the self’.

‘Ignorance is nothing but a superimposition of the non elf. The destruction of ignorance is liberation. Darkness cannot remove darkness. Wisdom, being incompatible with ignorance, puts it to flight’.

‘Ignorance produces perishable result that rises with the dawn and dies with the dusk’.

‘The ignorant long for results and engage in action with the idea of doership and enjoyer ship. The ignorant are deluded and think’, I act ‘I cause others to act; I enjoy; I cause others to enjoy’ and so on.

‘The ignorant set up the panorama of objects, each being governed by his previous karma and linger in life bemoaning their lot’.

‘Avidya or Maya is the power of the lord. She is without beginning, is made up of three Gunas and is superior to the effects. She is to be inferred by one of clear intellect only from the effects she produces. It is she who brings forth the whole universe’

‘She is neither existent nor nonexistent nor partaking of both characteristics, neither same nor different nor did both; neither composed of parts nor an indivisible whole nor both. She is most wonderful and cannot be described in words.’

‘Maya or Avidya can be destroyed by the realization of the pure Brahman, the one without a second just as the mistaken idea of a snake is removed by the discrimination about the rope. She has three Gunas known as TAMAS, RAJAS and SATTVA, named after their respective function’.

‘There is no ignorance outside the mind. The mind alone is the Avidya, the cause of bondage, of transmigration. When that is destroyed, all else is destroyed.

‘Atman is the ruler of the body, and is internal; the body is the ruled, and is external, and yet the people see these two as one! What else can be called ignorance but this?

Atman is all consciousness and holy, the body is all flesh and impure; and yet the people see these two as one! What else can be called ignorance but this?

Atman is eternal, since it is existence itself; the body is transient, as it is non existence in essence; and yet the people see these to as one! What else can be called ignorance but this?

‘Just as a jar is all earth, so also is the body, all consciousness. The division, therefore, into the self and non self is made by the ignorant to no purpose.’

‘Just as to a person suffering from a defect in the eye (jaundice), white things appear yellow, so does a person on account of ignorance see Atman (Soul) as the body.’

‘Just as blueness in the sky, water in the mirage and a human figure in a post (are but illusory), so is the universe in Atman.’